PIN'd

A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders

Author

Power in Numbers
March 15, 2024

Welcome to PIN’d - our weekly newsletter where we pin (lol, bear with us) the most important tech/startup news of the week for aspiring angels, vc’s, startup investors, founders, etc. Expect a new weekly roundup from us every Friday morning!

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📰 This week’s best news

Telegram has reached 900 million users and is close to becoming profitable. Founder Pavel Durov credits this growth to the introduction of advertising and premium subscriptions two years ago. The app is now approaching a potential blockbuster initial public offering.

Coinbase tops direct listing price as Bitcoin hits record

Coinbase's stock surpassed its direct listing price for the first time in two years, rising 5.8% to $256.62 on Friday. Shares of the trading platform are up more than 300% in the last 12 months.

Peak XV, the most influential venture investor and former arm of Sequoia in India and Southeast Asia, is launching an “evergreen” fund bankrolled by its investment partners and extended team. The company aims to become a significant LP in the firm’s future vehicles and to explore investment opportunities in different asset classes.

Cognition, a recently formed AI startup backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and tech industry leaders, announced “Devin,” a fully autonomous AI software engineer capable of handling complete development projects from code writing to final execution. This is the first offering of this kind.

Tempus, a medical lab testing and data company has hired Morgan Stanley to manage its initial public offering in the coming months. The startup, based in Chicago, has secured over $1.3 billion in private funding from investors such as Google, New Enterprise Associates, and Baillie Gifford. This move will add to the growing number of venture-backed startups aiming to go public this year.

Social Capital, a venture capital firm led by investor and podcaster Chamath Palihapitiya, has terminated partners Jay Zaveri and Ravi Tanuku due to an undisclosed matter involving its investment in AI startup Groq Inc. This is not the first time that Social Capital has experienced issues — in 2018, the firm underwent a partner exodus which led Palihapitiya to pivot the firm into a family office.


💰 Funding announcement highlights

Key, a networking platform for professionals founded in Palo Alto, raised $4.3 million in funding. Felicis Ventures led the round, which also involved Liquid 2 Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Archangels Ventures, Cerigo Investments, Everywhere Ventures, Startup Shibuya, MVP Ventures, and Xoogler Ventures.

Milu Health, a NY-based startup has raised $4.8 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. The company offers a platform for employees to merge their health records from different providers, to identify ways to reduce healthcare costs through data analysis, real-time alerts, and bill dispute support. BoxGroup, PagsGroup, and 81 Collection also joined the funding.

OpenMeter, a San Francisco-based company specializing in metering for AI, usage-based billing, infrastructure, and IoT use cases, has raised $3 million from Y Combinator, Haystack, and Sunflower Capital.

Glacier, a startup that uses AI and robotics to sort recyclables more efficiently and accurately, raised $7.7 million in funding from New Enterprise Associates, Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, AlleyCorp, Overture Climate VC, and VSC Ventures.

Adaptive ML, a startup headquartered in Paris and New York looking to simplify the complex processes of fine-tuning and aligning AI to fit specific business needs, has raised $20 million in seed funding. Index Ventures led the round, with also included investment from ICONIQ Capital, Motier Ventures, Databricks Ventures, IRIS, and HuggingFund by Factorial.

📚 Interesting reads of the week

In a huge milestone for the cryptocurrency industry, Coinbase, the leading cryptocurrency exchange platform, surpassed the market value of the renowned digital payments giant, PayPal.

Ryan Breslow rode his fintech startup Bolt to success, but legal battles and financial disputes ultimately led to a sharp devaluation of his company and a big valuation crash that wiped an important part of his fortune.

Solopreneurship is on the rise, mainly thanks to tech advancements that make running a business smoother and more cost-effective. These individuals manage all aspects of their business independently, making it easier for early-stage ventures to thrive in today's innovation-driven yet financially constrained market.

Peter Walker posted on the topic on LinkedIn after analyzing the 553 startups on Carta that were acquired in 2023 and comparing them to the general population of US startups by stage.

In 2023, women-founded companies received just 2% of the capital invested in venture-backed startups. However, there has been a steady increase in VC funding for female-founded or co-founded companies, and 2023 saw the establishment of several women-led funds, incubators, and new companies.

💪 Tech mafia of the week

Highlights:

💰 Most money raised: Pipe

🤑 Total money raised by the Plaid Mafia: $795 million

Weekly tech mafia leaderboard

The Plaid alumni network has built some amazing companies, so we took a look at the top companies.

The Plaid Mafia takes the 44th spot, with 9 companies founded in total and $795 million in total raised.

PS: Are you a Plaid employee/alum interested in getting your community together to invest in the community (and earn carry/other benefits along the way)? Or are you a member of another community that you think would make for an amazing startup investment community? 😉

Learn more about us and sign up for the waitlist here.

📌 PIN tweet of the week

💼 Who’s hiring in VC?

Looking to get into VC? Below are this week’s curated VC job openings.

Funden is looking for a VC Manager.

New York Life Ventures is looking for a Head of Platform.

Headline is looking for a VC Analyst.

Mozaic is looking for a Senior VC Associate.

Glasswing Ventures is looking for a VC Analyst.

📠 Fun fact of the week

In December 2015, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Infosys, and YC Research announced the formation of OpenAI and pledged over $1 billion to the venture.

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